MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The Innovation issue features the 10 breakthrough technologies for 2026! That’s hyperscale data centers, designer babies, new batteries made of salt, smaller and more flexible nuclear power, space stations you can visit, and more. Plus, read about conjuring water from air, dissecting artificial intelligence, and putting robots on the kill chain … and a scientist who swears he’s going to do a human head transplant any day now.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2026

Here are our picks for the advances to watch in the years ahead—and why we think they matter right now.

Meet the new biologists treating LLMs like aliens

By studying large language models as if they were living things instead of computer programs, scientists are discovering some of their secrets for the first time.

This Nobel Prize–winning chemist dreams of making water from thin air

Omar Yaghi thinks crystals with gaps that capture moisture could bring technology from “Dune” to the arid parts of Earth.

AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced.

Developers are navigating confusing gaps between expectation and reality. So are the rest of us.